Is this going to go even higher in future
I just skimmed, but might there be some bias here, with the researchers hoping that AOs will feel like they need to rely more heavily on SAT scores if grades aren’t a true indicator of skills?
“The new findings come courtesy of two researchers: Michael Hurwitz of the College Board, the folks who bring you the SAT…”
And later, “Lee said previous research has tied high school GPA to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a widely respected standardized test administered by the federal government. But the new research is the first to draw such a direct line between GPA and SAT scores.”
Just food for thought.
I’m hoping college admission officers can see through this. Our high school does not inflate grades. It’s a high achieving large public high school with 700 or so kids per grade. I think only the top 40 kids or so have straight As. We don’t rank but I know AO’s can figure out the percentile of the student by looking at the school profile that lists GPA for top 10 percent, top 25 percent and top 50 percent.
When I see posts where kids have a 98 average, I just roll my eyes.
My daughter had a 97 average. She works harder than I ever saw anyone work when I was in school.
I don’t think the higher grades are necessarily because of grade inflation.
S18 goes to a small academically-focused private school. There are no AP classes and no weighting of GPAs. A+s don’t exist and flat As are hard to come by. GPAs for the strongest kids cluster at around 3.8 and most kids are around a 3.5 or lower.
The general wisdom is that smaller and more elite colleges understand this and college acceptances reflect that but that large out of state public universities don’t have the bandwith to deal with kids with sub-3.5 GPAs, no matter the high school.
@pantha33m I think that’s correct. Lots of kids at our school with 3.7/3.8 unweighted averages going to Ivy League or comparable schools like Stanford, Chicago, etc. In our case, those are the kids taking 10-12 APs.
In our daughter’s elite boarding school, 4.0 is rarity to achieve despite 30% class going to Ivy plus colleges.
Downside of this grade deflation in boarding school is big and small scholarships that emphasis very high GPA, and are not familiar with school harsh grading
We also have a large public HS that does not inflate grades… at all. My D worked incredibly hard to accomplish what she did. Our HS is moving away from ranking… the admissions counselors will figure it out.
I was looking through my papers and found an old report card. I was ranked #1 in my school but my grades in the late 1960’s were almost all in the 80’s. I guess If I applied to college now I would have to explain!
I think this empasis on school profile that spell out average SAT math and average verbal is a check on rampant grade inflation
For the past 25 years, I’ve seen the stats of every incoming freshman. Yes, grades are rising. When I started, a 3.0 didn’t put a student in the bottom half of the class. As a rule, it does now. In the late 90s, as part of our fall development program, we had a presenter from ACT. He told us, back then, that GPAs had risen X% ( sorry, don’t remember the number ) while scores remained fairly flat. This is not new. Or particularly newsworthy.
Our schools inflate GPAs by only providing weighted on transcripts - colleges can do what they want with that info, but typically 20% of the class has a “4.0” or higher. However, individual teachers certainly don’t just hand out As for no reason or allow retakes to bring a low grade to an A. Average SATs are around 1260.-1270 most years.
Grade inflation is real. Teachers have been browbeaten by anxious parents who can’t stand to see their little darling get any grade lower than an “A”.
It is very real… but not in all schools.
Our HS taught a certain honors level class… that some parents felt was taught on an AP level rather than honors. Whether they were right or not- I have no idea. Their kids did not receive the grade that they felt was deserved, and they complained… non-stop… to the department chair. After a few weeks of fielding these complaints the dept chair came in to speak to the class, and defended the teacher. He told the students that their grades were not changing and if they think this is hard, wait until AP. The teacher and dept chair did not cave in to the demands of the parents.
At the end of the year many of these kids were not recommended for AP. The teacher actually told them that they were “too immature” to take the class ( yikes) and that she was doubtful that they would put in the amount of time that was required. These kids still took the AP level class anyway and… Guess what? The parents complained again that their child was not being treated fairly and was not getting the grade he/she deserved.
Sometimes the teachers cave and do what the parents pressure them to do, sometimes the students don’t put in the necessary time, and sometimes … The parents waive them into classes that they probably should not be in… and then complain about the grade.
My older D was in an honors level class that was too stressful for her. I pulled her out and placed her in regular, and she did very well. I guess I could have complained to the teacher and tried to get her grade changed… but why?
Grade inflation is real… But not everywhere. My D worked very hard for her grades… in hard classes… and I never interfered with the process.
From the article: “the upward creep is most pronounced in schools with large numbers of white, wealthy students.”
Not surprising at all. In my left-leaning town in NJ, the white wealthy moms were the most vehemently opposed to the standardized test (PARCC) the town wanted to give to all students. Sure, there were some problems with the test but IMO underneath all the pretexts is simple that these moms just could not stand to know that junior isn’t as smart as they thought he was. Besides what standardized test can possibly capture all the qualities that make junior SO special!
But I digress…
DD1 (rising senior) goes to a large public school of 2500+ kids. She has 4.7 W GPA, so I guess there’s grade inflation. Even so, she got B’s on AP Calc BC and AP Chem. But aced the AP exams-- 5 on both.
I am not too worried about grade inflation though. Most top colleges ask for class rank and it’s hard fake your way into the top 5% of a class of 550 kids.
What if your high school doesn’t rank?
@JasmineArmani I think MOST high schools don’t rank, at least not explicitly - many do send a report to colleges with the decile distribution of GPAs so a student’s GPA can be placed in context.
All the knobs on this amp go up to eleven!!
The scale doesn’t matter – the rank does. And even though the high schools don’t rank, they provide the colleges with the info needed to determine rank. And then the academic record is further illuminated by the presence of AP classes and AP test scores.
Yawn.
At our HS there is a big difference between an A (4.0) and an A- (3.66). An A- average kid would likely be told by those on CC that his grades were " low".